


lonely for something to touch

by tigriswolf



Series: comment_fic drabbles [266]
Category: One Direction (Band), Real Person Fiction
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Character Death, M/M, Psychopathology & Sociopathy, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2017-02-20
Packaged: 2018-04-23 03:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4862075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/pseuds/tigriswolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he left home at eighteen, Louis fully expected to be a starving artist in London.   That is not how things go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title: lonely for something to touch  
> Disclaimer: they’re all real people so they belong to themselves; title from Anne Sexton  
> Warnings: AU; violence/death  
> Pairings: Louis Tomlinson/Harry Styles, Liam Payne/Zayn Malik  
> Rating: PG13  
> Point of view: third  
> Wordcount: 1585  
> Prompts: author's choice, any, Even a hit man deserves a second shot. (Grosse Pointe Blank) ; any, any/any, Together forever. Or else. (Fear)

“Lou, you’ll be home for Christmas this year, right?” Daisy asks, in that whiney tone that used to get her and Phoebe the last bite of dessert. It’s completely unbecoming for a young lady of seventeen but Louis still feels himself falling for it a little.

“I’ll try,” he promises, settling in comfortably at the scope. “But I won’t know for sure till this case is done.”

He can _hear_ her pout through the mobile. “I hate that work keeps you so busy.” She’s whining for real this time. “We all do.”

“Daisy,” he starts, and then, “Give me a moment, love.” He mutes the call, following the target, and then lightly squeezes the trigger once, twice. He smiles in satisfaction, unmuting the call. “Daisy,” he says again, “I’ll be home for my birthday.” 

He can treat himself, after all: he just bagged one of the biggest bounties in Europe.

.

When he left home at eighteen, Louis fully expected to be a starving artist in London. He planned on being the full cliché of smoky bars, keeping his instruments in shape at cost to himself, and then being discovered and rocketing to stardom. 

None of that happened.

He tells his family that he is a private investigator, and he is – from a certain point of view.

“Contact Nick,” Louis tells his assistant Niall. “The contract is closed, _with_ the bonus.” 

“Are you fuckin’ serious?” Niall demands. “You did not just kill Britain’s darlin’!” 

“’fraid I did, Nialler,” Louis chuckles. Tomorrow’s headline will cause tears the country over because Simon Cowell and Aiden Grimshaw both just got messily murdered. 

Aiden Grimshaw is everything Louis once thought he’d be.

“Make a note,” he adds. “I need to get all of the girls somethin’ amazin’ for Christmas.” They all adore the poor sod. 

“You absolute fucker,” Niall mutters. “I really liked his music.” 

Louis laughs. “But the bonus! Some of it’ll be yours, for the inconvenience.” He watches police cars go screaming by. “I’ll see you back at the office,” he says. “After you call Nick, take the day.” 

“Thanks, boss,” Niall mumbles and Louis rings off.

.

Louis at eighteen had been impetuous and stupid. Looking back, he has no idea how he even survived meeting Nick. Nick had just started his own company and Louis stumbled across one of his hits, and while he was gaping at the guy dying Nick had put the knife to his throat and asked, “Well, pretty, what’re you doin’ here?” 

Louis had been sure he’d die in that backroom of his least-favorite bar. 

Instead, Nick offered him the same job Niall has now. (Of course, Niall is much more productive than Louis was. And competent.) 

.

He goes home for his thirtieth birthday, with expensive, pretty things for his sisters, the latest toy craze for Ernie, and every book by Mum’s favorite author. He’s tried to keep up with all their lives but he feels guilty for lying to them about everything he does. 

Lottie’s engaged (Louis had him professionally vetted by Zayn, the only person he’s ever partnered with for a job), Fizzy is nearly done with university, Daisy and Phoebe are nearly done with college, and he staggers beneath Dorie and Ernie’s weight when they both jump on him. “You’re gettin’ so big!” he says, spinning them around. “Mum, what are you feedin’ these monsters?” 

“The same thing I fed you, Lou-bear,” Mum says, snickering. “Welcome home, love.” 

.

He turns thirty and all he has to show for it is nineteen dead, four tortured, and at least six attempts on his own life (that he knows about). Twelve years since he left his mother’s house with foolish dreams of stardom and all he is now is a ghost. 

Louis calls Zayn on Boxing Day and Zayn laughs at him, asking, “Are you really comin’ down with a conscience now? It’s a little late, brother.” 

“Yeah,” Louis sighs. And it’s not that he’s suddenly realizing what he does is wrong; he’s known that since he watched that man bleed out while Nick held a knife to his throat. 

“You’re not afraid,” Nick had said, lowering the knife. “Want a job?” 

He hasn’t spent more than three days at a time around his family in ten years, because being around them feels _wrong_. It’s too easy, what he does. It shouldn’t be but it _is_. 

“I think I’m gettin’ bored, Zayn,” he says, slumping across the bed in his childhood room. 

Zayn laughs at him again. 

.

The thing is, he’s not often given the chance to design the hit himself. The client usually chooses; for example, two of the biggest names in the entertainment industry in the UK? It would not be Louis’ choice to gun them down in broad daylight on a London street. But working for Nick, the client has to be satisfied. 

He realizes it’s a slippery slope and he feels odd, thinking about it in Mum’s house, where both pairs of twins still live. He texts Zayn, _how do you feel about serial killers?_

Zayn replies six hours later, while he’s in the middle of a Disney marathon with Ernie: _better than mass murderers yeah?_

Which, well. Is true. 

.

Louis rings in the New Year in New York, in Times Square with thousands of people. For his first, he chooses a non-descript man and is as clean as he’s been trained to be. 

His second is months later in Sydney, three hours after a hit for Nick. That one’s a little messier. 

His third is where things begin to go wrong. Or, perhaps the rightest ever in his life. 

.

He usually has one-night-stands because he doesn’t want to have to keep up with a story, the way Zayn does with his music teacher boyfriend. Liam thinks Zayn is a poet who travels the world for inspiration; as far as Louis knows, he’s never even questioned where Zayn’s constant stream of money comes from. He’s a good, solid lad, even though Louis doesn’t really get along with him that well. But it’s Zayn’s business. 

Niall has a different girl every few months; Louis stopped keeping track two years ago, four months after he hired Niall. 

Louis doesn’t date, is the point. 

Tonight, he goes to his fourth-favorite nightclub, intent on pulling purely so that he can have his third. He has plans, things he’s wanted to do on hits but never could. It’ll get _messy_. 

… there’s probably something wrong with him, he admits, dancing his way through the crowd, looking for someone who catches his eye. 

He spots an older fellow on the edge of the dance floor, a creep like the kind he used to avoid. As Louis watches, he tries to pull in a pretty boy but the boy’s friends tug him toward the bar instead. 

Perfect. 

.

He’ll be embarrassed by it later, but Louis doesn’t know anyone is present until a deep voice murmurs, “You took my toy.” 

Louis whirls around, gun in hand and aimed before the sentence is finished; there’s a man a little taller than him, a little younger, hands already raised, head tilted to the side as he looks past Louis to the man sobbing into a gag. 

“I’ve been stalking him for _weeks_ ,” the stranger pouts. “’s’not fair you get him.” 

Blinking, Louis lowers the gun slightly. The stranger’s eyes dart to him. “What are you going to do to Walsh?” he asks. 

“Walsh?” Louis repeats, letting the gun drop further. 

The stranger nods. “It’s his name. Louis Walsh.” 

Louis laughs, setting the gun on the table. “That’s my name, too,” he says. “What did you have in mind for our friend here?” 

The man’s face breaks into the widest grin Louis’ ever seen on an adult. 

.

After Walsh is disposed of, Louis and Harry (as the curly-haired killer introduces himself) get breakfast at a bakery Harry knows. “I work here four days a week,” he says while they wait for their food to be bagged. “I bartend the other days.” 

“Is that a good way to find toys?” Louis asks quietly, glancing up at Harry through his eyelashes. 

“It is,” Harry says, grinning. 

.

They take a winding path through the city. Louis learns that Walsh is Harry’s seventh toy; he tells Harry about his job, and how it’s growing boring. Harry grew up in a picturesque village where nothing ever happened; Louis admits he’s fantasized about killing his boss a dozen times. 

They pause at a crosswalk. “Let’s do it,” Harry says, turning to face him. 

“What?” Louis asks, leaning in so that the people nearby have less a chance of hearing. 

“Your boss,” Harry says. “Then you can take over, run the company how you like. It’s all about the name, yeah? So get rid of him and take it.” 

Louis tilts his head. The light changes but neither of them move. “I don’t think it’s that easy,” Louis muses. “But if we do…” He starts to smile. “How’d you like to get paid for your games?” 

.

Nick doesn’t die easily. Louis settles in comfortably and watches Harry work. 

.

Zayn is wary around them both for a long time, and he never leaves Harry alone with Liam. “You going to take him home to the family?” he asks while Harry chats with Niall at the front desk of the office. 

“Why wouldn’t I?” Louis asks. Harry’s no threat to the girls, Ernie, or Mum. Dan, maybe, but Louis is certain he could keep anything unfortunate from happening. 

They have the whole world to play with, after all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title: lonely for something to touch  
> Disclaimer: they’re all real people so they belong to themselves; title from Anne Sexton  
> Warnings: AU; violence/death  
> Pairings: Louis Tomlinson/Harry Styles, Liam Payne/Zayn Malik, mention of past Louis/Zayn  
> Rating: PG13  
> Point of view: third  
> Wordcount: 1160  
> Prompt: Author's choice, any/any, Cute Poison (Prison Break)
> 
> Note: I really thought this was a oneshot. Now it’s trying to become a ‘verse on me.

Zayn's family believe he is a poet. He is, actually; he's had five volumes published under his name, so that his parents can brag about him, or his sisters can laugh, so that he has a cover if he ever meets someone he wants to keep. 

He enjoys the poetry but it could never give him the lifestyle he wants. 

.

Zayn meets Louis in a classic meet-cute: they're both in the same coffee shop when it gets robbed. Zayn is 22; he doesn't know how old Louis is, at the time, just that the man next to him isn't panicking, which keeps his own panic at bay. 

The man next to him sighs, muttering, "Fucker's makin' me late," and Zayn looks at him instead of at the angry man waving a knife around. 

One of the other customers decides to be a hero, tackling the guy with the knife; he gets sliced across the chest and it's the worst thing Zayn has ever seen in person. Most everyone else screams or cries, if they haven't been already. 

Zayn stares at the blood and watches in - _shock_ , he'll tell the police officer later. But it's awe that keeps his eyes glued to the man who takes the knife from the attempted-thief, kicks him in the head, and then crouches down to try to save the would-be hero bleeding out. 

He meets Zayn's gaze as they wait for the emergency services to arrive. "Can you get me napkins or somethin', love?" he asks. 

When it's all over, Zayn, Louis, and John (the would-be hero) are given headlines in the paper, but quickly forgotten about. 

Saving a life together would be the start of a wonderful love story - except that Louis smirks at Zayn, blood still coating both of their hands, and asks, "Up for a little more excitement?"

.

Zayn doesn’t like guns all that much; he finds them inelegant. He prefers knives or poison. If you kill with a gun, he explains to Louis more than once, it’s obvious. But poison? Poison can be disguised as so many things. 

He also doesn’t like Nick that much, so though he takes the training eagerly, he only does so many jobs for Nick’s company before branching out on his own. He’s very selective of his clients, and doesn’t choose the messy ones to work for. 

His first volume of poetry is written in an adrenaline haze after his first solo job, and he submits it only at Louis’ prodding to an old friend from university. It’s published locally and doesn’t make any sort of splash, and the paycheck from it doesn’t compare at all to the money he makes from killing. 

.

He partners with Louis sometimes, only because he actually _trusts_ Louis, the way he trusts no one else in their business. He knows Louis trusts him, too, because he’s met Louis’ family, same as Louis met his. Safaa had been convinced they were dating, but though they’ve fucked a few times (always after a job), he thinks of Louis as his best mate and could never be _in_ love with him. Louis isn’t the staying kind, he thinks once, in the midst of a mad poetry-writing session. It becomes a poem in his third volume, a sort of an ode to the love-that-never-was. 

He knows when Louis reads it because of a post-card from Orlando, Florida, with _fuck you very much_ scrawled on it. 

.

He meets Liam at a club. Liam is sweet, the way none of his flings ever have been. He’s funny and fumbles the lines he tries on Zayn, is solid and strong. He’s also a music teacher at a local primary school who volunteers at a teen detention facility during the weekend. 

The night they meet, Zayn is still on the high from a double-assassination staged as a murder-suicide. Perhaps he should feel guilty for touching Liam with hands so stained but instead it only makes everything so much more thrilling. 

.  
Liam loves it when Zayn recites poetry, pressing the words into Liam’s skin as he bites his way down Liam’s torso. He charms Mum and all three of Zayn’s sisters, and discusses policy and politics with Zayn’s father. He doesn’t seem to like Louis that much, but then, Louis loves poking at him, so Zayn figures that’s alright. 

Zany never once considers telling Liam what he _actually_ does. Half of his fifth volume is written for Liam, and on their two-year anniversary, he even thinks about proposing. He discusses it with Louis and finally decides not to. It’d be a marriage built on a lie, and that’s worse than simply dating, innit? 

He doesn’t pray much, since following Louis into this life. He’s bought his parents a new house with money he earned through murder, given his sisters all they could ever ask for, and he sleeps easily at night, anywhere in the world. 

His sixth volume is called _Shadows_ , and he pours all of his fears and regrets into it, so that he can let them go. 

.

When Zayn is thirty years old, he goes to work for Louis. Publically, Louis is a private investigator; he is, in truth, an assassin who took over his teacher’s company. Nick had employed a half dozen agents and Louis keeps four of them. 

Zayn doesn’t ask what happened to Justin or Eleanor, and assumes Louis gave them to his new – _pet_. 

Louis had asked, _how do you feel about serial killers?_ and Zayn had answered, _better than mass murderers yeah?_ because he thought it was rhetorical. Instead, Louis falls head over heels in lust (Zayn dreads it being love) with an honest-to-Allah serial killer. Because he’s on the road to being a serial killer himself. 

It’s… dangerous is the best-case scenario. He talks with Niall about it, once he realizes what Louis is doing, and again, after Nick’s untimely and unlamented death. Niall seems too bright and bubbly for this work, and maybe that’s why Louis keeps him around. It’s not like the rest of them have consciences worth mentioning. 

Zayn keeps Liam away from Harry Styles, and makes sure that Louis knows he is to never mention Zayn’s family to the monster masquerading as a man. 

. 

Curled up in Liam’s arms, back from an ‘inspiration trip’ to Los Angeles, Zayn plans. He hopes to never need it, because he truly never wants to have to go against Louis. But Harry Styles is something that contingencies are needed for, whether Louis admits it or not. 

Zayn takes pride in his craft but he doesn’t kill for the pleasure of it. It is a transaction, work that is necessary because someone will do it. He can charge exorbitant sums for it. He can take care of his family. 

He will watch carefully in the coming months and decide if the contingency should be implemented or not. As he told Louis, more than once, poisons can be disguised as _so_ many things.


	3. unfinished part3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title: lonely for something to touch  
> Disclaimer: they’re all real people so they belong to themselves; title from Anne Sexton   
> Warnings: AU; violence/death  
> Pairings: Louis Tomlinson/Harry Styles, Liam Payne/Zayn Malik  
> Rating: PG13  
> Point of view: third

Because he is a nerd, when he hires Niall, Louis calls him a _padawan learner_. Niall finds it hilarious and Louis is the most easy-going boss he’s ever had. Considering Louis kills people – yeah.

Louis advertised for an assistant to keep track of his life for him. Niall applied basically as a lark because he applied for every job in the paper that week. He dropped out of university during the first year and bummed around his friends’ couches while doing a multitude of part-time work for the better part of half a decade. 

For reasons Niall didn’t understand at first, Louis hired him. It was his third week arranging Louis’ life as a private investigator before Louis finally told him what he (and the company that employed him) actually did.

Niall did not panic, he’s proud to say. He did, however, require the afternoon off to ponder things. Louis promised he wouldn’t kill Niall, whether or not Niall chose to stay. He seemed sincere, but Niall hadn’t even known him for a month. Plus, there were all the _other_ assassins who worked there, and Mr. Grimshaw, the big boss. He seemed slimy and Niall never did like him. Didn’t mourn at all when Louis and Harry killed him. 

 

...

Niall’s pov on Company – besides Justin and Eleanor, who works there? Why didn’t Louis keep those 2?


End file.
